Monday, July 9, 2012

Friday 6 July 1280, The Hour of the Wolf (Entering the Fight)

As the battle unfolds in earnest, the noise is
earth-shattering, and the smell of death and burning flesh rises in
the air. The magnitude of the danger and the potential scope of the carnage
beginning to take place fills you with adrenaline as you quickly make your
plan. Oloc scribbles the notes onto a small scrap of parchment which again
Varros attaches to Karnak's leg before sending the raven to report to the Captain.

Arrows rain down from the Fairbrook archers into the ranks
of their goblin counterparts. You see some goblins fall, but the majority,
untouched, return a volley of their own. In the confused melee further on you
see only shadows of men and goblins violently intermingled, while the large
creature of flame picks up yet another man of the guard, and then tosses the burning
body back in amongst his comrades.

Realizing time is of the essence, you quickly put your plan
into motion. Duran, Varros, and Oloc carefully maneuver into position beyond
the extremity of the goblins' right flank, ready to shoot missiles into the end
of the goblin line. They keep themselves angled slightly to the rear of the
goblins to minimize the chances of hitting one of Belloc's men by mistake.
Though the enemy mage is too far off still to be seen clearly, by his
silhouette against the flames of the elemental, he appears to be a
hobgoblin.

Meanwhile Gaven, Stan, and Ollie work their way into
position behind the goblin archers, just out of bowshot (about 150' behind
them), and pour Varros' three flasks of oil into small pools, connecting each
pool with a line of oil. Gaven sends Stan and Ollie further back, then quickly,
before the oil "fuse" can evaporate, strikes a spark to the
oil-covered grass. A flame rapidly runs from pool to pool lighting them all as
Gaven, too, dashes back to what cover is provided by the darkness outside the
light cast by the newly set fires.

The hobgoblin commanding the archers notices the flames
behind the group. The bulk of his company remains focused on returning the
missile-fire of Belloc's archers, but the hobgoblin gives a sharp order to
three of his goblin archers to move toward the burning oil and investigate.
These three cautiously advance toward the fires Gaven set, bows at the ready. They
do not yet see Gaven and the hirelings.

Once the diversionary flames erupt, Duran and Varros start
shooting into the goblin flank, about 120 feet away. Each of them manages to
take down a goblin in the rear rank. The other goblins do not appear to notice the bodies fall to
the ground with arrows in their backs. Out of dagger-throwing range, Oloc makes himself mentally ready to cast his charm spell when the occasion arises to use it.

Suddenly you hear another blast on the horn that sounded earlier
and, a second later, a horseman – who can only be Belloc – can be seen by
Duran, Varros and Oloc, crashing into the front of the goblins' right flank company.
His warhammer rises and falls several times into the goblin ranks, and two new
goblin corpses lie on the ground.

*************************

OOC: Actions?

I assumed that the flanking group stayed out about 100-120'
away or so from the enemy (medium range for the bows) which would prevent any
goblins from charging the party in a single round if the group got noticed. Let
me know if you wish to close the gap on the next round (or move back to long
range). I assumed that Oloc is saving his charm for the M-U (still out of
range); the flanking party is about 240' away from the enemy mage.

For every part of the battle in which you are not personally
involved, I've come up with a simple abstracted casualty calculation system (so
however active or inactive you are, the fight will eventually play out on its
own). I'll report to you any of those casualties that your characters could
actually see. Wherever your characters are directly involved, I'll play out
those combats normally, rather than using the abstracted system.

Summary of what you can see now:

Rear: Gaven can see four goblin corpses laying on the ground
among the company of Goblin archers. Discounting the three creeping back to
investigate the fires, that leaves about 13/17 still shooting at Belloc's men.

Right Flank: On the far right flank, it appears Belloc's men
are getting the better of the fight. Duran, Varros and Oloc can see no humans
down on that part of the field, while they are able to count three goblins
down, leaving about 17/20 vs. Belloc's left flank company of 10/10. Additionally, two more goblins in that same company
are eliminated by Duran and Varros' arrows, and Belloc's charge takes out another
two, bringing the right flank goblin company total down to 13/20.

11 comments:

Oloc is clearly at a loss to figure out how he and his minor skills could affect the outcome of the battle. The best chance still seems to him to be to get in range of the hobgoblin wizard. Then an idea comes to him. "Perhaps I can charm a goblin and have him do the work of disrupting the spell."

He looks about for any possible goblin in range of his spell.

ooc: Sorry for the delay - now back home so posting should return to normalcy! Can Oloc see a gob in the area that he may be able to use his spell on?

OOC: If Gaven were to take Stan's bow and 2 arrows and move into max range, would the goblin's be able to see him easily? That is, does the fire screw up their darkvision?

My idea is: Gaven moves into range unseen by the goblins and tries to kill off a couple, which may scare the goblins back to the hobgoblin captain to report that there is a force sneaking up from behind.

The plan depends on if the goblins would see Gaven firing at them all alone.

OOC: The fire would definitely mess up their darkvision but they might still see him "normally."

Even if they do see Gaven, they may assume he is alone, or they may assume there is some larger number of enemies there shooting at them

Historically it's not uncommon for men in a fight to exaggerate the number of enemies shooting at them, especially if taken by surprise, if they can't see the enemy clearly, and if the shooting is coming from the flank or rear -- almost all of which would apply here (complete surprise might be doubtful, since the goblins are on the lookout).

It will all come down to the dice, but given what he can see Gaven would estimate that there is only a small chance the goblins will realize a lone archer is shooting (he'd figure probably no more 20-25%, maybe even less). He'd estimate his chances of sowing some sort of additional confusion/disorder to be pretty good (in the ballpark of 75% perhaps even a tad more if he's lucky).